“The social basis of activism explains why Facebook, an increasingly popular social networking site, is a natural companion for tech-savvy organizers. Because of the site’s massive user base and its free tools, Facebook is almost too attractive to pass up. However, the site has its flaws and is not a guarantee of organizing success. This guide is written to provide some insights into what works, what doesn’t work, and how best to use Facebook to advance your movement.”

[…]

Pros: How Facebook Can Help Activists

Lots of People Use Facebook

The Price is Right

Hassle-Free Multimedia

Opt-in Targeting

[…]

Cons: Why Facebook Isn’t a Silver Bullet

Content on the Site is Disorganized

Dedication Levels are Opaque

Facebook isn’t Designed for Activism

A. Support the Monk’s Protest in Burma

…was conceived within Facebook. Once it gained a following it served as a central hub for user-generated content;, acting in essence as a semi-self-moderated wiki. Appointed group moderators updated various event lists directly as the information came to them through the membership network. This practice resulted in something like a news feed for group members.

Initially the group provided a platform for people inside Burma to contact the outside world. They used the tools to post information and media about what was going on in the ground. Mainstream news outlets were then able to use this Facebook hosted content and quoted members of the group, adding to the group’s momentum.

Frustrations with Facebook

Outside of the network that it made available, Facebook wasn’t very helpful. Group owners had little control over anything other than content, which made it difficult to tailor the group tools to their activist efforts. Moderators couldnt message all members due to an arbitrary cap of 5000. Had this not been the case, there may have been a bigger turn out. at events It also wasn’t possible to search for people within the group because there were too many names to sift through. These shortcomings inspired the creation the external BGAN site to guarantee the effective distribution of information.

B. The Help Fouad Campaign in Morocco

On February 5, 2008, a 26-year-old Moroccan engineer, Fouad Mourtada, was taken into custody because he had created a false Facebook profile of the King’s brother, Moulay Rachid, as a practical joke. In police custody he was brutally interrogated and beaten. Angered by this unjust treatment, a group of young Moroccans got together to protest his imprisonment and fight for Fouad’s freedom.

How They Used Facebook

The campaign to free Fouad Mourtada initially set up the Facebook group to publicize the case, aggregate information and solicit messages of solidarity from the more than 5000 members who joined it. Members were asked to change their profile pictures to a Free Fouad badge to spread the message further, and the group was used to upload press clippings, picture messages and various multimedia. On February 23rd, Fouad was sentenced to 3 years in prison by a Casablanca court. A member of the Facebook group, writing a message on the group wall, suggested organizing a protest in Paris in solidarity with Fouad. Within a few hours the idea was quickly expanded upon and Facebook became the main tool in organizing simultaneous rallies in 8 cities around the world (Rabat, Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris, London, Madrid, Montreal and Washington DC). Event pages were created for each each city, allies and local organizers were identified, and were asked to administer their local events, organize the logistics, and seek the appropriate government permits to hold a rally where it applied. They were also asked to take pictures and videos and send them back to a centralized email address or upload them to Flickr.com or YouTube.com. These were used the day after the rally to create a YouTube video summarizing the case and showing the extent of the solidarity movement around the world.

Frustrations with Facebook

Responding to false comments or rumors posted on the group wall is extremely resource intensive as the administrators had to spend a lot of time moderating the comments. The solution was then to provide extremely detailed background information in the group description, and within a few days, other group members, not moderators, started posting comments to react to false statements or accusations and correct them. Because it is not designed specifically for activism, Facebook as a platform can present some technical challenges. It is not possible for an administrator of groups with more than 5000 members to message all of them at once, and when groups of members were sent messages one at time, administrators were quickly red-flagged as spammers by Facebook and were prohibited from sending messages anymore. One way to bypass this issue is to invite all the group members to the group’s events pages, through which administrators are given the right to message all members.

Given that most people use Facebook under their real names and identities, many of the group members expressed concern with the lack of anonymity and some chose to leave the group or create different accounts under aliases because of the political danger of being identified with the protest.

C. The Free Kareem Campaign in Egypt

Kareem Amer is an outspoken Egyptian blogger who challenged the oppressive regime of President Hosni Mubarak and criticized Islamic extremism and violence. While his posts were considered offensive by some because of his harsh assessments of Islam, he was one the most prominent secular bloggers in Egypt and many admired this courage in calling for civil rights and freedom of expression in his country. On November 6, 2006, he was arrested by Egyptian state security officers because of his blog. On February 22, 2007, he was sentenced to three years in prison for insulting Islam and inciting sedition and one year for insulting President Mubarak. Shortly after his arrest, a group of digital activists, led by Esra’a El Shafei, created a web site, FreeKareem.org, and began a campaign to fight for his freedom and subsequently support him during his imprisonment. As of the writing of this guide, Kareem is still in prison.

How They Used Facebook

As part of their campaign, FreeKareem.org used Facebook to spread awareness among college students and to recruit members for the Free Kareem Coalition. They found at least two solid contributors on Facebook who heard about the cause via their groups, threads, and wall posts and immediately wanted to help the campaign. Most importantly, they used Facebook to organize worldwide rallies. They created a Facebook event page for rallies in France, Germany, the USA, and other countries. Facebook allowed people to get involved with the campaign who would not otherwise have been aware of it. Students attended these events without ever contacting the campaign. They were able to get involved because campaign organizers used the Facebook group to post a description of the rally, why it was held, and where it was going to be held, and people just showed up. Following the events, people forwarded the digital pictures they had taken to the campaign, noting that they heard about the event from Facebook and wanted to support in any way possible.

Facebook is a great recruitment tool for digital activists, but it’s tricky. So many things go on in the world of Facebook, so the campaign had to work hard to gain people’s attention. Free Kareem’s Facebook groups were generally active. People discussed Kareem in wall posts, through group messages, and by sharing videos and pictures. One great thing about Facebook now is its multimedia tools, which really helped the Free Kareem campaign. It allowed the campaign to personalize Kareem’s situation as much as possible. Videos always help. They are much more powerful than photos, so the campaign tries to use them often.

Frustrations with Facebook

Facebook is generally disorganized. It’s currently full of junk – fun walls, gifts, pokes, games, etc. So with all of these distractions, it is very hard to generate any interest in something serious. Every time Facebook adds a useless tool, it makes the work of activists a lot harder, because it means they have to make more effort to be interesting to their target audience. Member spamming (posting irrelevant material on the wall/board or repeatedly publishing insulting and inappropriate messages) is also increasingly challenging because it requires you to moderate the group all the time.

“OVER three million Aussie’s tuned in to the reunion special of the country’s famous 90s lifestyle entertainment show Hey Hey It’s Saturday last Wednesday. Although it was odd to be watching a show supposed to be on Saturday on Wednesday, the movement to get this iconic variety show back on TV was perhaps the most interesting aspect of the whole thing. You may not know but one of the main reasons the reunion specials were approved by Channel 9 was because over 250,000 people had joined a ‘bring back Hey Hey’ fan group on Facebook.

With the development of social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and blog sites, a debate is emerging about the potential for these Internet-based platforms to encourage a new breed of activists. Social media strategist Jye Smith in a blog post on The Age online argues that Internet-based campaigning is an effective way to empower a large audience. “Social media raises awareness like never before because it’s more accessible to larger audiences”, Smith said.”